Sorting Hat as Horcrux? (Was: Voldemort's chat with Dumbledore)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 143206

Orna wrote:
> <snip> [A]lthough I still don't like such an influential object [the
Sorting Hat] being a horcrux, it does make sense. I often asked
myself, how come, when Slytherin talent has to do with ambition, that
we never see any Slytherin, being just that  - ambitious, and not
necessarily evil. According to your theory, the sorting goes more
along with their attraction towards the dark power. 
> 
> But if it's like this, how can the sorting hat function like this –
 calling for unison. And another thing- that would mean, Voldermort
has placed his horcrux in an object which can think for himself. And
there is something else:
<snip MercuryBlue>
> Well, we actually don't know how the encasing spell looks/sounds
like. I'm not saying, it couldn't be 30 seconds, I'm just curious. I 
mean, don't you have to be near the object where you want to encase
the horcrux, while you are doing the killing? I can't think the
fragmented piece of soul, is just floating around, waiting to be
encased, or incased in an intermediate object. I think the encasement
has to be done at the time of the killing, IMO. <snip>

Carol responds:
I don't like the idea of the Sorting Hat as a Horcrux, either, in part
for the reasons that you stated: It can think for itself, and we don't
know how long the encasing spell takes. The Sorting Hat has been
calling for unity, not exactly the sort of thing an object
contaminated by Voldemort would do. It also regrets its own function,
sorting the students into houses ("quartering them every year"), and
JKR says that it has never made a mistake (so presumably we'll find
out why Percy and PP ended up in Gryffindor). It also presented the
Sword of Gryffindor to Harry, enabling him to defeat the Basilisk and
ultimately to destroy the Diary!Horcrux and Diary!Tom. And it should
be noted that Tom Riddle himself, a half-blood with enormous ambition
(as well as an apparently innate propensity to evil) ended up in
Slytherin before he could possibly have tampered with the Sorting Hat.

Another reason I don't think that Tom Riddle would have made the
Sorting Hat a Horcrux is Diary!Tom's attitude toward it. ("This is
what Dumbledore sends you? A songbird and an old hat?") Now granted,
sixteen-year-old Memory!Tom would not yet have known that he made any
Horcruxes, even perhaps the diary, which was originally created for
another purpose, but his contempt for the hat doesn't indicate that he
would have chosen it. He likes his Horcruxes to be valuable and not
subject to decay, objects made of silver or gold, not shabby old hats.
I can see him wanting the Sword of Gryffindor as a Horcrux if it were
available to him, but it doesn't seem to have belonged to Armando
Dippet, only to Dumbledore, and it doesn't seem to have appeared in
DD's office until Harry pulled it (like a rabbit!) out of the Sorting
Hat. (I'm not sure that it was hidden in the Sorting Hat all that
time. I think DD had it and hid it there for Harry's use during his
second year. No way to prove that, though.)

I agree with Orna that it's unlikely that the complex spell required
to create a Horcrux could be cast in thirty seconds. I'm guessing that
it requires an elaborate ritual incantation spoken aloud, something
the portraits would have heard and reported to the headmaster had he
attempted something so overtly evil while he was still at school.

I disagree, though, that the Horcrux has to be created immediately
after the murder. Tom Riddle was wearing the ring when he asked
Slughorn about Horcruxes, indicating that he had already murdered his
father and grandparents. He had also already "written" the diary that
preserved his sixteen-year-old self inside it; that was written near
the end of his fifth year. The murders occurred between his fifth and
sixth years. So at that time he had killed four people counting Myrtle
(I think she was the murder he used for the diary, and, yes, IMO,
using a Basilisk to kill someone counts as murder just as it would be
murder if he set a rattlesnake loose in a classroom and it bit someone
and that person died.) Or, if we don't count Myrtle, he had murdered
three people but did not yet know how to turn either the diary or the
ring into a Horcrux. That must have happened later, after he had
discovered the spell required to create a Horcrux, at the earliest
between his sixth and seventh years. (I think he must have visited
Grindelwald, who is in the books for a reason, before Grindelwald's
defeat.) At any rate, he used objects already in his possession and
murders already committed to create those first two Horcruxes. 

Tom's appearance has already begun to change by the time he visits
Hepzibah Smith and acquires two more future Horcruxes, the cup and the
locket, indicated that he has created at least one and probably two
Horcruxes by that time. Hepzibah's murder would have enabled him to
create another Horcrux from an object he stole from her--let's say the
cup because it was specifically associated with her and with her
Hufflepuff heritage. If he used Myrtle's murder for the Diary!Horcrux
and his father's for the Ring!Horcrux, he still had at least two
unused soul bits (from his grandparents) to use for the locket. If
Myrtle doesn't count and he used, say, his grandfather for the diary,
he still had his grandmother's murder available for the locket. (For
all we know, Tom in his early twenties may have already committed
other murders as well, but five is more than sufficient for four
Horcruxes.)

So, in essence, all that's required to create a Horcrux is a soul
that's been split by murder and knowledge of the incantation or spell
required to create one, as well as a powerful desire to connect your
immortal soul to earthly existence. The murder and the creation of the
Horcrux don't need to occur together, and the object doesn't need to
be present when the murder is committed. (According to Dumbledore, Tom
prefers to use significant murders and powerful magical objects
connected with his personal history, but neither is absolutely
essential. Certainly an object that won't deteriorate and can't think
for itself is vastly preferable to a ripped and dirty old Sorting Hat
with a mind of its own and thoughts that are in many ways the
antithesis of Tom's.)

Carol, who thinks the unidentified Horcrux is the tiara Harry placed
on top of the HBP's Potions book so he can find it again (Why mention
it otherwise?)